Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat [Hardcover]

Peter Nichols (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1997

The author chronicles his and his wife's voyage aboard a wooden sailboat from the Caribbean to England, where his marriage foundered, and his trip back alone, which also became a journey of self-discovery. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When your marriage fails and life in England gives no solace, the solution, thought Peter Nichols, is to take his beloved boat Toad and sail across the Atlantic to Maine. Nichols, who has spent years sailing small boats but who is far from a wealthy yachtsman, had lovingly restored his 27-foot boat with his former wife. At sea, he reflects upon the busted marriage and upon the odd turns his life has taken. He also engages in some fascinating thoughts detailing the rigors of sailing single-handedly across an ocean. This book is very well written, and as Nichols slowly realizes that Toad has a flaw below the waterline making her less than seaworthy, it turns into a poignant battle for survival on the open ocean.

From Library Journal

The author, ostensibly a resident of Northern California who has worked in the film industry but who is obviously at ease just about anywhere, set sail from England in an old but elegant wooden boat named Toad and heads for Camden, Maine, by way of the Azores and possibly Bermuda. The trip is meant to retrace a similar voyage Nichols took years before with his wife (known only to readers as "J"), but because they divorced in the interim, this particular solo trip becomes a reflective one. There are dangers involved in sailing alone across the Atlantic, and we become privy to Nichols's gradual realization that tragedy is ready to strike. This highly introspective work by a gifted author portrays an experience that most of us only dream about and makes it palpably real. Libraries in seafaring locales will definitely want this title, but even landlubbers will find it entertaining.?Joseph L. Carlson, Vandenberg Air Force Base Lib., Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First edition (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670871796
• ISBN-13: 978-0670871797
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,007,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Nichols is the author of the national bestsellers "A Voyage for Madmen" and "Evolution's Captain" and three other books of fiction, memoir, and non-fiction. He spent ten years at sea working as a professional captain and has taught creative writing at Georgetown University. NYU in Paris, and Bowdoin College. After living in France and Maine, he is astonished to find that he lives in Tucson, Arizona.

"Not an unswerving literary trajectory. I've wanted to write - and to be a writer - since childhood. In my 20s I worked at writerly jobs in advertising and journalism while I wrote two unpublished novels. Then I stepped aboard a friend's yacht and my life swung away toward boats and the sea for a decade. I became, in turn, a boat bum, a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed commercial captain, and a proficient navigator with sextant. At age 33, the leaky 27-foot, engineless wooden sailboat that had been my home for 5 years, in which I'd twice crossed the Atlantic, sank near the end of my third crossing (I was alone). But I had found a subject.
I was rescued and crawled ashore in Los Angeles where, naturally, I began writing screenplays. I was fatally encouraged: I found agents and made a little money, but never saw my screenplays (they were full of leaky projects and rootless characters) turned into films. Unhappy with my screenwriting career (and my non-writing career of many jobs, including being a 'ship wrangler' in Borneo for a bad pirate movie), I fled LA to a shack in Northern California. Desperate to write something good and see it become real somehow (and unqualified for any other work), I wrote what became a memoir of my years afloat and the twinned sinkings of my boat and first marriage (Sea Change). In the next ten years I published a novel and three more books of non-fiction - all about not so much the sea and sailors, but fringe characters who have retreated to the water's edge and have nowhere else to go.
Being published changed everything. I went fairly quickly from being a yachtie, shepherd, carpenter, ship wrangler with literary delusions to a visiting professor of creative writing at some good colleges. I've been fortunate to have wonderful students. I love teaching because I can tell young writers what it took me decades to learn - simply, that yes, you can, if you really believe in yourself and don't give up. I dreamed of becoming a writer and I became one. And if I did it, they can too." PN, 2010

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sea Change-A book that spoke to me, calling me to the sea., June 29, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat (Hardcover)

I wandered into a book store to find Peter Nichols there for a book signing, he spoke of his journey, his life before and after setting sail, he read from his book and I was glad I had the chance to meet him. I found the book riveting at times and a comfortable cruise at other times. I recomend it not only to someone who has an interest in the sea (I never did before this book) but to anyone whoever loved or hopes to love for I found it as much of a love story as a journal of the wooden ship of days goneby, now crossing the ocean. Get and read this book

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy-to-read honest slice of life, August 9, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Dunedin, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat (Hardcover)

Reading this book, I could easily envisage the events that were described. This is no account of survival at sea, far from the land. The last journey of Toad is a journey of reflection.

What differentiates Peter from the hundreds of other sailors bumming their way round the cruising world is his ability to open his heart and, it seems, openly display his emotions. I felt uncomfortable in some ways that he read his ex-wife's diaries through his last solo voyage, but then it was only then that he could discover part of himself I suppose.

He travelled unprepared and I think that he also travelled a little foolishly, but I also didn't get the impression that he was relying on others to save him.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it to those who enjoy reading a range of books on ocean voyaging in small boats.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I spent my time well--wished I could have prolonged the trip, July 24, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat (Hardcover)

A student of film who once dreamed of the ocean, I only occasionally find the solution to cut the invisible tether to the tele. Nichols's cameo on CNN sparked my curiosity, and I sought Sea Change the next day.
Have you ever enjoyed an escape experience which takes you further from fantasy than toward it? Although Nichols may take us off the ground, our journey is still largely at sea level, and, for a while, below even that.
His experience may read matter-of-factly in the style of a captain's log at times, yet few will be able avoid emotional ties to the sea, Toad, and J. for all Nichols's authenticity. His travelogue carries a burden of modesty, but the reader knows each time he or she picks the book up that it drips of worth.
This one will sit next to my Sobel.